The Cottage on the Hill

The childhood song, "Great green globs of greasy, grimey, gopher guts, mutilated monkey meat, chopped up birdy feet..." is stuck in my head. The reason is because I'm getting big batch of chicken feet from a young lady who's butchering her chickens today. Chicken feet make a very rich, hearty, healthy broth. She's giving them to me for free since she was just going to throw them away. After getting the bear meat and now the chicken feet, I'm beginning to wonder what other free meat I can get. If I had the time to do my own butchering, I could get all the free wild rabbits and squirrels I wanted.

Hurray!! I finally found a local farm that's certified to sell raw milk! I'm going to try to make a trip there some time next week! Oh, all the wonderful, healthy things I can do with raw milk (the way God intended milk to be before man poisoned it with pasteurization and homogenization). Also, my Mama's Milk Tea came in from Bulk Herb Store today. It's really tasty. I don't even have to put any honey or sugar or stevia in it. I hope does it's job and increase my milk. I can't believe baby girl will be 4 months old tomorrow! According to Nourishing Traditions, she can start egg yolk feedings at 4 months old. I bought some organic, free range eggs from a local homeschooled young lady yesterday. I think some of my family is beginning to think I'm nuts with all this strange health food and against-mainstream baby care. I'm telling you, read Nourishing Traditions and it'll open your eyes to how literally sick and degenerative American childr...

Bubby isn't progressing as quickly as I'd like with the potty training. I've been using cloth diapers and cloth training pants while we're home. When we're out and at night, I put him in pull-ups. Thankfully, I found a large box of Huggies pull-ups at Big Lots for $24.00. I'm hoping they'll last him until he's fully trained! Baby Girl is in cloth diapers part-time, too. I've only made her three so far, and they're used up in half a day, but they work well, so I'll make her more. Things are just so expensive! I priced out what I'd need to make home-made formula and it's really expensive. The doctor's office gave me some free samples (enough for 3 or 4 days). That'll help. Oh, how I wish I could still nurse! The media is abuzz with this whole fiscal crisis and bailout. It's hard to avoid and hard to not worry about it. I know the Lord will provide for us, but it is very real that we may have to really cut back. O...

I've been invited to a mom's day out (kids welcome, of course) to the horse auction next month. I mentioned it to hubby, but it doesn't look like we'll be able to get a riding horse now. The farmer who owns the farm where we'd keep it doesn't believe his draught horses will appreciate another horse. The oldest mare doesn't take well to other horses, except for her offspring. On the other hand, a couple years ago, the farmer bought a pony for his grand-daughters. The pony can be ridden by small children, but it's also trained to be driven and can carry two adults. It's the sweetest pony, but the draught horses don't like it and the grand-daughters are losing interest. They're looking towards a horse they can ride. Soooooo.....the farmer already said that my children can have use of the pony when his grand-daughters lose interest. I would LOVE to make that little horse my own and learn to drive it. I've already made cutesy eyes at hu...

It is getting harder and harder to stick to a grocery budget. I'm also getting cheaper and cheaper. For example, yesterday I was at the local super Walmart buying some groceries. I wanted a loaf of italian bread for tonight's dinner. The loaf was nearly $4.00. It went back on the shelf and this morning, Bubby and I made a perfect sized loaf of delicious wheat italian bread....and I can pronounce the natural ingredients in it! I now make my own sour cream (so much tastier than the store bought stuff and easy, too....just put 8 ounces of heavy cream -not ultra-pasteurized- in a clean glass jar. Pour in at least a tablespoon of cultured buttermilk, cover and let sit at room temperature for 24 hours. It'll thicken after 48 hours.) Bubby's been my little helper today. He not only helped me make italian bread and knead the sourdough and refresh the starter, but he also helped me wash the kitchen floor and dig another square for my 4-square herb garden.

Last night, I made no-commercial-pectin crabapple jelly. Yum! I can hardly wait until next year when I can preserve the bounty of my enlarged garden! Here's an update on my relactation. A few days ago, it just wasn't working. Nothing but a few drops would come out and my daughter would refuse to even try to nurse. Then, while working in the kitchen after dinner, I felt a let-down! So, I gathered up my pump and the newspaper, ran into the bedroom, bundled myself up on the bed and pumped away while reading the paper. When I was done, I had 2 1/2 ounces of milk in the bottle! It was like a little ray of hope that I could relactate! I felt so happy to give my daughter that milk! Then, last night when she woke for a feeding, I put her on and I had a let-down! In the morning, I had another one! I felt a bit heavy this noon-time and had a very slight let-down and managed an ounce by the pump. My daughter even attempted a feed and got a little mother's milk while in the...

The blessing for me came in the form of the foreleg (arm?) of a bear! Hubby came home with this huge hunk of meat loosely wrapped in plastic and shoved it into the freezer. "What is THAT!?" I asked him. "Bear," he says in typical lack-of-detail masculine fashion as he walked out the door. So, around dinner time, I pull out the huge hunk of meat and hubby and I start butchering it (thankfully, it wasn't frozen yet). A few probing questions later and I learned that a customer of the farm next door went hunting in Maine and got a bear. He gave hubby the roughly butchered foreleg for free. I never had bear before, so I cooked up a small piece and it was DELICIOUS! We got around 7 lbs. of beautiful meat off that forearm and all for free! Now, here's a blessing for you. This is what my pastor told the congregation yesterday, "You are a thought in the mind and heart of God!" Isn't that just breath-taking? God thought you up! God thinks of y...

More Woman-Talk Ahead.... There are a few more reasons why my milk failed: 1. I never bothered correcting a poor latch-on because it didn't hurt me and she seemed to be nursing well despite it. Both Bubby and Baby Girl have a slightly convex upper lip between nose and mouth. It's an endearing feature, but their upper lip would curve in rather than flanging outward during nursing. She often would "click" while nursing. Now I know that this was a BIG faux pas! 2. She was a fast nurser and I was glad of it. Most of my nursing sessions lasted under 5 minutes!! She would drink away the let-down, switch sides and need a burp and then sleep for 3 hours. I'd be happy and get up and go start another project. Not good...not good. 3. With Bubby, I LOVED the Baby Whisperer books. Now, I feel like they contributed to many issues, including nursing. The author is against letting a baby comfort-suckle mommy because it makes them too dependant blah blah blah. So, I had it in my h...

Warning...woman-talk ahead. Stephanie, thank you SO MUCH for your advice. I should print that out and keep it in my Home Management Binder for when I have baby #3. I did put your advice to work yesterday, but still nothing but a 1/2 an ounce of watery milk. But, it did get me to thinking and thinking HARD about what went wrong this time. I was doing so much right (exclusively nursing round the clock), so I was pretty shocked when I got my first post-partum period at 2 months. At 3 months, I had a huge hormonal shift that was like crashing into a brick wall. It seemed as soon as I hit that hormonal brick wall, my milk supply went down to nothing. So, I started feeding her more often, but she would still cry and fight. Quinoa, fenugreek, borage, eating enough food that I actually put on weight.....taking afternoons off for nursing and napping sessions. At 3 months I lost my let-down, too. I had a great let-down at the start. But once this hormonal shift occured, my let-down left. But I d...

Here are some more things I'd like to find to be rid of some plastics in my house: glass salad dressing bottle metal fans (there are some nice vintage-style ones out there) If my basement was dry enough, I'd love to get cedar boxes rather than plastic totes to store baby clothes in I really need to go through Bubby's toys and throw out the broken ones. This'll also be good in preparation for Christmas and then his birthday. He has such a large family and friends who consider us family that he gets so much! If hubby gets the new job he's looking at, we're going to get a new computer. I want a laptop. That'll eliminate a large amount of unsightly plastic around the house in the form of a monitor, keyboard and tower. It's a sad day because it's painfully obvious that breast-feeding is no more (at best, reduced to what little watery milk I can squeeze out by hand). After 3 days of my daughter literally beating my chest with her little fists, pulling...

Walmart has these really cute glass pumpkin containers in various sizes. I'm thinking of getting one for a cookie jar (rather than storing cookies in a plastic tupperware container) and maybe one for a cream cheese jar when I make homemade cream cheese rather than a plastic tub. I'm also using mason jars to transfer things in plastic bags like baking chips, hubby's candies, nuts, etc. While cleaning the bathtub today, I realized we can get rid of plastic net spongies and replace them with all-natural loofah. I can get a loofah at Big Lots for $1.00. I did keep a few plastic containers for leftovers. Like I said in my prelim. post, we can't get rid of all plastic and in some cases, plastic is better. For example, I do NOT recommend using glass, ceramic or stoneware for your shower stuff. Keep your shampoos, etc in plastic.

First of all, Candy, I even bought the most expensive kefir in the store thinking it was the best. It touted still having live active cultures in it. Maybe I'll try another brand. I'm just happy my kombucha from a store-bought bottle worked! I've got my second batch brewing right now. Also, I found out that if I use Brown Cow organic cream top yogurt as my starter for a new batch of yogurt and I put in just a little more than 1/4 of a cup, my yogurt comes out quite thick. I've had inconsistent results with Stoneyfield. Tiffany, I do know about quinoa and I have a fair amount in my cupboard, but I haven't eaten it in a while. So, I'll have to set out a batch for sprouting tonight. I also learned that herbs can only work for so long, so I've finished up the fenugreek and started using borage. www.bulkherbstore.com has a tea that's supposed to be great for Mother's Milk. I spent today at my parents' house while I waited for my grocery-gett...

First of all, here's a picture of Bubby's toddler bed. I made the quilt, the pillow and the pillowcase. It was pretty much my first time quilting (I've dabbled before, but never finished a project) and I rather enjoyed it. I'm looking forward to doing more quilting. It's been so busy lately with no signs of slowing down. Today, I went grocery shopping, picked a bowl full of wild cherries, made kombucha, sourdough starter, yogurt, whey and cream cheese, and catfish with brown rice cooked in turkey broth and grilled zucchini for dinner. I have a chance to sit down this evening while I have a load of laundry in and I'm waiting for my daughter's 9pm feeding. I finally bought Celtic Sea Salt and I'm hooked! I'm not a person who usually goes for salty things, but the flavor of Celtic Sea Salt is so good! It was a hard time finding multivitamins for Bubby. All the ones in Walmart had nasty stuff in them like aspartame and words I couldn't pronounce. T...